. . of God, by all definitions, be well

120818 18:22 healed

To know yourself well, possibly healed, the wounds of your heart no longer suppurating -- weeping blood from grief -- dying. 

Is the nearest to God you will ever be in life. And in death become one of the choir of martyrs, ordinary Angels, Saints and All Faithful, Prophets and God Her/Him self. 

Praying by dance & rejoicing, forgiving and mercy for the wellness of all creation in gratitude.

God i beseech thee restrain me from my rage against those who . . . .
well, you know too well, those people identified by accruements of wealth wearing the blood and flesh of children sacrificed to their God of Greed: Mammon.

"One can acquire everything in solitude--except character." --Stendhal

Isolated by chance, fate or fortune I have now a community. More nearly the family I never had. 

Add, an unreasonable love of, and for a friend, who happens to be a woman trusted eternally.

ASTONISHING!

Miraculous? 

Of course it is given the depth of the well like grave I've, for a lifetime previous, resided in. Wet to the hair follicles in tears . . . well . . . well there were other bodily fluids as well; mine and their's.

Beloved brethren of God, by all definitions, be well

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

120818 13:33 museum
Hope I'm a poor representative of Jesus to you since in knowing myself I remain but a dim light projected into the starry heavens above me, enlighten/darkened, at any point in the vast continuity or contiguity of consciousness. Rendered more clearly now as the essence, or virus, of ethic and moral thought applied to reality.

Merely this moment in time a particle of sentiency too aware of my potential bigotry, hypocrisy, egoic, desire, longing, loving what? Death or life?

That said I better know Jesus and God in the following sense they can and are at times manifest in the laughter of a child, the tears of and old man, the sighs of a man with a maid. Or for that matter a man with a man or woman with a girl. Mattering not one iota the mix of gender it all is love incarnate.

Identity slips away with age and those concerns expressed by some addicted to idolatry the marks of ink upon the flesh of dead trees written and applicable to that time and place need not be applied now any more than circumcision or dietary laws . . . .

KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid

I am not religious in any sense that I can be proud of, or pretend to know more of than what is within each soul created before birth lasting long after death. And of those living dead I would quicken them with light yet in doing so would eclipse their desire to linger in death asleep while walking and talking and gossiping over whatever. To love my enemy as myself is to know that at differing points we both pass along the path to what shall we call it Heaven? Yet why Heaven when Heaven is within you as our beloved Jesus said.

And is not all of it merely an illusion; a drug of choice? What some call Maya. What is the meaning of four letter words: love, true, hate? Not even God does that but merely politicians manipulating your sense of safety dependent exclusively on their executive powers garnered by theft of everything in sight.

Scarcely have I answers for myself in life or death or rebirth. Resurrection or reincarnation it is all part of a life lived. Again? Yet questions abound jesting jousting tilting wind milling Jesuits and I laugh at that and myself for the confession of what I so admire in creation the minds surviving the trials of what -- all of it?

Arcing across the desert darkness of my mind was the image of myself face down weeping kissing the cold gray flags of Westminster in construct or as now begging alms to survive in a time of perfect indifference.

After Randy's death I sat writing a poem that had gestated years but mostly aboard Paradox sailing unfed for three days alone ripped to shreds by his, "Daddy will I ever see you again?" I cannot now recall the words but the spirit lingers even now. It said in essence that I loved sailing the oceans of God's tear in the palm of his Hand. To which, on presentation, rector Cannon Peter Spencer, my spiritual father then said: "heresy"

Submerging me in the alchemical retort, a well of unknowing, wherein I continued to breathe but nominally until now i kneel naked before the cross wooden faux no pee no shit no bloody nails of foot or attachment singing my sad songs for a Jesus who speaks in the darkness of this cathedral of words lunar illumed words i cannot share

For if I did it would abort your self investigation and creation the virgin birth of the real you and a healer i'd not be. Hansom does as hansom is, enough is enough; since all life lives through the genius of God else it in reality be but a darkening dream; smoke and mirrors soon gone

120818 15:56 after thoughts after a pause

I think God has no ego and therefor is the servant of servants not imperious. The thing I lost in my near castration was my sentimentality for love knowing it now as something fierce never faux. Something, an energy, both resilient and fragile like life always is. At least for me it is and let it be me for you, specific or all; a passion in compassion to define what I am. Empathy for your seeing what pain and suffering is as experienced and defined; your TRUTH.

Could it be that my truth of God is modeled on my own self abandoning?
Or is that merely another conceit? God is always God and I am what i am; nothing at all.

amen

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

120818 09:48 yes

. . . even to myself arisen regardless of time light or night I am mostly reverent but then equally so irreverent as well possibly to some more so than not. Scatological of course learned beneath my mother's feet kicking me near insensible yet then too she could do it with her eyes flaming me even before I took an inordinate interest in her breasts of which I recall never having succulence in any or all senses clauses pretences and so it goes that I now recognize the rejection of my young bride the one who not only informed me her father's life lost to death would have precluded our marriage to which mother if I remember correctly was one hour late with the wedding cake in either or any case she, the bride too soon after the nuptials her nipples I did stroke approaching her at kitchen sink from behind gently encircling her waist then softly did I hand arisen or arises to enshroud her luscious breasts to which she in terrifying silence did imply never ever do that again of such behavior i so accustomed complied and thus wasted so many years of adoration become slavery to her hysteria twirling on a dime did turn from lust to lackluster in all save a few occasions when i was able to drive her beyond all her defenses into sensual oblivion . . . like mom on rare occasion, too seldom to remember often or well, was All Woman, All WOMEN, goddess to me. 

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

120818 0702 applause
Stoic silent politicians stood in reverent farting belching and scratching balls and more than a few vaginas No Amen for St. Abe's Gettysburg Address a Prayer for America indifferently heard by slobs
who'd strip and dick you, shear you, then eat you quicker than the words be spoken simply for the pleasure & proof their vain vanities APPLAUSE PLEASE!

Or was it i as child who stood silent in reverent then and now the For, Of and By The People described

Or the sound of one hand idle as those whose vanity made them deaf dumb and mute The Light upon 
a Hill groaning gown dim like their wits idolizing the words of Founding Fathers mostly slave holders then & now nary a working commoner amongst them defended unreasonably by a Criminal Court superior established by the war criminal and his puppeteer humorless

The crowd shouting more, more, more please Fuck US to Death more and harder pretty please the face of death adored not the Saint who crucified by bullet set the slaves free whose war profit was he to prosecute? 
~~~~~~~~~
For what and why do i write? For US of course, we The People of this commonwealth: Earth. Happily freed from my cage and now the rock of my intransigence. Incorrectly; accused of and punished for incest by dear old Mom. Yet for that, this time, this date, I am freed of my humorous self reference: "Bastard Catholic" meaning Episcopalian or merely a Pope less Catholic. Since by nature, nurture and choice I am congregant only of God yet had I, have I, to do it all over I'd change nothing for the stripes and wounds of my heart have made me what I am: nothing. But before the end of time and everything else, without sentiment, I'd love an hour or two with St. Ignatius and the legions of all saints actual named in what follows:
~~~~~~~~~
--Adin Ballou The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845
But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?


Published on National Catholic Reporter (http://ncronline.org)
Home > Blogs > John Dear SJ's blog > Adin Ballou's vision of nonviolence
Adin Ballou's vision of nonviolence

by John Dear SJ  on Nov. 15, 2011 On the Road to Peace 
Once, a journalist asked Leo Tolstoy who he thought the greatest American writer was.

"Adin Ballou," Tolstoy answered.

The journalist was puzzled. Who? He had never heard of Adin Ballou. Few people had.

Unfortunately, even today, few people know about Adin Ballou.

But I agree with Tolstoy. Not only was Adin Ballou an original thinker and a significant writer, but I consider him one of the most influential Christian peacemakers in our history.

Last week, after speaking at the Lexington Heritage Museum near Boston, I fulfilled a long dreamed of pilgrimage to Hopedale, Mass., to visit the memorial, community home and grave of this great visionary.

Standing by Adin Ballou's grave, I gave thanks for his steadfast witness to peace and original insistence on Gospel nonviolence.

Adin Ballou's name and work has been a source of wisdom and inspiration to me for 30 years. I urge those interested in peace and nonviolence to study his life and writings, and recommend the excellent website set up by "the Friends of Adin Ballou"  as a good starting point. (The quotes and information that follow come from this website.)

"Adin Ballou is the major theorist of nonviolence before Tolstoy and Gandhi," my friend historian Michael True writes in his book, To Construct Peace. "Ballou's work was known to both of them, and particularly important to Tolstoy."

Indeed, Tolstoy begins his mammoth anti-war masterpiece, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, by describing his discovery of Ballou's writings on Christian nonviolence, and how it affected him. Tolstoy spent the remaining years of his life expounding on Ballou's teachings. Tolstoy even wrote to Ballou and corresponded with him during Ballou's last year. Tolstoy would never have developed his thoughts on peace and nonviolence without Ballou, and Gandhi would certainly never have espoused his visionary nonviolence without Tolstoy.

Like other Abolitionists, Adin Ballou based his life on the ethical teachings of Jesus. But Ballou went further. Not only was he faithful to them throughout the terrible 19th century, he articulated a fundamental insistence on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, particularly the fifth antithesis: "Offer no [violent] resistance to one who does evil" (Matthew 5:39).

Whoever refers to this verse? Ballou spent his life struggling with it. I'd like to see present-day Christian and Catholic fundamentalists wrestle it.

Ballou called this commandment "the law of non-resistance," which Gandhi later translated into "the law of nonviolence." For Ballou, it meant active, steadfast noncooperation with violence in all its forms. Tolstoy writes about Ballou's efforts to promote Christian nonresistance to evil:

For fifty years Ballou wrote and published books dealing principally with the question of non-resistance to evil by force. In these works, which are distinguished by the clearness of their thought and eloquence of exposition, the question is looked at from every possible side. The binding nature of this command on every Christian who acknowledges the Bible as the revelation of God is firmly established. All the ordinary objections to the doctrine of non-resistance from the Old and New Testaments are brought forward, such as the expulsion of the money-changers from the Temple, and so on. Arguments follow in disproof of them all. The practical reasonableness of this rule of conduct is shown independently of scripture. All the objections ordinarily made against its practicability are stated and refuted. Thus one chapter in a book of his treats of non-resistance in exceptional cases. He owns in this connection that if there were cases in which the rule of non-resistance were impossible of application, it would prove that the law was not universally authoritative. Quoting these cases, he shows that it is precisely in them that the application of the rule is both necessary and reasonable. There is no aspect of the question, either on his side or his opponents', which he has not followed up in his writings. I mention all this to show the unmistakable interest which such works ought to have for [those] who make a profession of Christianity, and because one would have thought Ballou's work would have been well known, and the ideas expressed by him would have been either accepted or refuted. But such has not been the case.
It amazes me how we continue to ignore Adin Ballou, whom Tolstoy heralded as the most important American writer. Tolstoy took up Ballou's cause and spread Ballou's interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount until it was picked up by an Indian Hindu in South Africa.

Gandhi's life and thought were transformed and influenced every Christian movement for justice and peace that followed. (The Friends of Adin Ballou website includes an excellent lecture by Michael True which traces the effect of Ballou on Tolstoy and Gandhi, and how Ballou's teaching eventually bore good fruit.)

"I committed myself to total abstinence from all war, preparations for war, glorifications of war, commemorations of war and... any resorts whatsoever to deadly force against my fellow-men [and women]," Ballou writes in his autobiography. "I would neither fight, vote, pray for, nor give any approval of any custom, practice or act which contravened the law of perfect love toward God, my fellow moral agents or the universal highest good. I would have no deadly weapon on my person or in my habitation. Thus I was an unmistakable peace man from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet."

As the biography and other information at "Friends of Adin Ballou" explain, Ballou was a devout Christian who became a Unitarian Universalist minister, a well-known preacher, writer, lecturer, social reformer and newspaper publisher. His staunch involvement with the Abolitionist movement and his close friendship with the heroic leader William Lloyd Garrison inspired his thinking and visionary peacemaking.

Born in 1803, Adin Ballou fought slavery for decades. In response to the violence of pro-slavery terrorists upon several Abolitionists, Ballou developed his theory of nonviolent resistance. His most well-known work, Christian Non-resistance, outlines his case for active nonviolence. Another major work, Practical Christian Socialism, explains his vision of Christian communal living, structured egalitarianism and social justice, which allowed for private property and the profit motive, but disallowed any use of violence.

In 1839, Ballou and his friends published the "Standard of Practical Christianity," a series of guidelines for Christians that renounced cooperation with government through the methods of nonviolent love. Signers also renounced war, slavery, alcohol, licentiousness, covetousness, capital punishment, worldly ambition and corporal punishment for children.

"We cannot employ carnal weapons nor any physical violence whatsoever," the signers agreed, "not even for the preservation of our lives. We cannot render evil for evil ... nor do otherwise than 'love our enemies.'"

In 1841, he and his friends bought 258 acres of rural farmland near the Rhode Island border to create an intentional Christian community of peace, love, nonviolence and equal sharing. Ballou called his utopian Christian community "Hopedale." At its height, it had about 230 full-time members. (Gandhi later built similar communities in South Africa and India, except that he opened his ashrams to all faiths. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin likewise tried to create farming communes for the poor and peace workers.)

Hopedale lasted for 15 years and remains an outstanding experiment in Christian communal living. Today, the center of the community, where Ballou once lived, is a tiny park with a statue of Ballou in the middle.

As the Civil War broke out, many Christian abolitionists who espoused "non-resistance" renounced their nonviolence in support of war against Southern racists. William Lloyd Garrison publicly gave up his Gospel peacemaking in favor of violence to end slavery.

The war broke up the fragile movement. But Adin Ballou and his friends stood firm in Gospel nonviolence. They refused to support killing even for the noblest cause. He said Christ knew what he was talking about, that war would never bring true peace and that Christ's commandment of "non-resistance to evil" worked if tried.

We catch some of Ballou's insistence in a series of quotes which Tolstoy picked as his favorites:

Jesus forbids me to resist evil-doers by taking eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for blood, and life for life.
Non-resistance alone makes it possible to tear the evil out by the root. To offend another, because he offended us... means to repeat an evil deed ... to encourage the very demon whom we claim we wish to expel. Satan cannot be driven out by Satan, untruth cannot be cleansed by untruth, and evil cannot be vanquished by evil.

True non-resistance is the one true resistance to evil. It kills and finally destroys the evil sentiment.

Adin Ballou died in Hopedale on April 20, 1890, and is buried with his family at the cemetery on the edge of town. After Ballou's death, Tolstoy lamented how Ballou's message was never mentioned in his obituary. He noted how Ballou was called the spiritual guide of his community; how he delivered between 8,000 and 9,000 sermons; how he married 1,000 pairs; and how he wrote 500 articles; and yet the teaching to which he devoted his life -- "non-resistance to evil" -- was never discussed.

"Ballou differs from some other religious pacifists in asserting the necessity of [active] resistance to human evil," Michael True writes. "This resistance may occur in two forms: moral resistance, such as example and persuasion, and also what he calls 'non-injurious, benevolent physical resistance.' As examples of the use of non-injurious physical force, he points to the restraint of a madman, holding a delirious sick person on the bed, or compelling a child from injuring another."

For Ballou and later Gandhi, nonviolent, nonresistance to evil must be active. Ballou thought Tolstoy's writings advocated passivity, and Christ was anything but passive. Ballou was also one of the first to teach active nonviolence not just from a religious or biblical basis, but from natural philosophy, saying that active nonviolent resistance to evil was eminently more practical than violent resistance.

"Times and generations are coming that will justly estimate me and my work," Ballou wrote toward the end of his life. "For them, I have lived and labored, rather than for my contemporaries. To them I appeal for vindication and approval."

Ballou took a gamble and based his life on the truth of active nonviolence and Christian peacemaking. He believed that because this was God's will, his work would bear good fruit, even though he might not live to see it.

Ballou was right. His teachings, one could argue, changed the world. I honor his courageous adherence to the nonviolent Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, and hope that more of us can take that same gamble. Ballou teaches us to think long and hard about Jesus' teachings on nonviolence, to experiment with them in our own lives and communities, and to promote them as far and wide as possible. I wish every Christian and Catholic church in the world would take up the lessons of Adin Ballou to reclaim the nonviolence of Jesus.

"A better future is dawning," Ballou writes in Christian Non-Resistance, "and it is needed to help develop the coming age of love and peace. A great transition of the human mind has commenced, and the reign of military and penal violence must ultimately give place to that of forbearance, tolerance, and mercy."

As I stood by Adin Ballou's grave last Monday, red, yellow and orange leaves fell gently around me through the warm sunshine. I prayed that his vision of a new world of nonviolence would come true even in our own violent times. May his teachings, vision and example continue to bear fruit and inspire us to welcome that new world of peace, love and nonviolence.

PS 
I worked freelance for The Holy Roman Catholic Church via their various news venues and remain shaken to my Methodist roots. Of the faces of God I would tell you what I know; both the inside and outside of everything I've ever witnessed in this life. 

Be well and please do some random kindness since the recipient may actually be Jesus resurrected and your hand the only kindness ever known in life this time around. We are family and belong to one another. 

Amen & Amen & Rejoice in everything & again Amen

Were we perfect there'd be no need of us or life for we would of needs be the Crown of the servant King perfect in and of Him/Herself. For what sting did we deserve Original Sin and Death incorporated but to give a spin internally infernally in eternity. A sort of halcyon Higgs boson known popularly as the "God particle." What drives creation birth life destruction of everything save God alone.

120818 0628 perfection
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

Naked Greed's Lordship

Of meats which describes me good better best white?
On questionnaires multiple guess published to divide 
and conquer serfs as slaves to fear one another Union
impossible The no speak of Kings, Statesmen or politicians
rule at all costs the deaths of millions their sport and
pleasure without attribution the retribution of their caste

Of rights, privileges and proclamations none is believable 
given that knaves like me starved will prostitute our mind
to those who in fear belabor us to render them divine by
word making their deeds seem noble and kind obvious 
lies nakedly decreed The Emperor yha yha & ho ho flap
in deed exposed while cloaked ignoble farting noble ideals
orally suffocating dissent noxious flammable sophistry 

. . . oh sweet Jesus in a dunce cap do I love to make myself laugh

Of course it is by their own deeds that would be kings make themselves last 
in perpetuity  their faux simulated service to mankind while congressionally obscenely incestuous burdening their larders The worst of course are the ones of great voice who delight in eating their constituents last in line licked the banquet clean grown gigantic never lean always looking for MORE! No please.

Thus ends what for now remains of the inspiration beginning this: "Too often we . . . enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." --John F. Kennedy . . . really?

Isn't it astonishing what criminal minds can purchase and use against the spirit of law. The purpose of law is to terrorize the poor never disabling the Terrorist; a sophist for the law of Love. I love all meats since cutting aside the skin we're all pink inside and for The Love of God would I ever remain anonymous in tribute to Virginia Woolf who fabulously said; "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."

Happy Birthday Sis!

120818 04:13 meat
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

I am a lamp wick sucking fuel from all experiences 
lighting my nights curiosity whiling away the hours 
ignored enchanted the difference between genius
& celebrity, chastity celibacy or not. Celebrity a prison
captivity keeping the keeper occupied rattling keys &
stroking the bars idle expectation of something new a
truncheon beating originality to death slowly a pulp
no longer quivering indifferent death. However genius 
pushes boundaries far reaching into all that is within 
good and grotesque embracing each in turn lovingly
accepted as friend potential always since regardless
what one does it is always acceptable to a friend not
the thoughts but the doing & being between the hours
of life aflame.
Later future as in now.
I recognize the enemy self not mine by my Parental fear
inculcated at boot toes imbedded in every and each orifice
sodomized by those the Tribe of Kings, Inc. who serially &
severally sodomized them my parents broken upon the
wheel of greed. Ignorant the intent of virgin boys given
a last fling any and all virgin girls of the realm to fecundate
the fields next harvest cycle before ritual slaying the 
furrowing of their bleeding perhaps not yet dead bodies
into the ground The Kings of yore their imperial martyrdom rite
the harvest festival of Halloween to come in ghostly aberration
yet now sent all the boys and girls of the realm surrogate to slake
the greed of a realm grown too large to sustain the number of us. 

120817 23:14 lamp wick (2 & final for now)
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved